


risen again

by Debate



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Arya Stays With the Brotherhood AU, AryaxGendry Week 2020, F/M, Gen, Less than canon-typical violence, POV Multiple, Pre-Relationship, Revenge themes, book canon, but there are ~feelings~, mentions of disordered eating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:47:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25811551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Debate/pseuds/Debate
Summary: “Aye, Gendry's young like you, better use at the forge. You could be a great help too, what with all those orphans staying with the Heddles.”Arya bites her lip, considering. Loyalty pulls her in two directions. She feels a cold breeze at her neck, then creaky fingers resting on her shoulder.“Daughter,” the Lady rasps and Arya’s heart trembles. It is the first time her mother displays any remembrance of her. The garbled word is enough to spark a fire in her, one bright enough to keep her warm.“No,” Arya says to Thoros, looking over her shoulder. The Lady is ugly, unnatural, but Arya is not afraid of her. “I’m staying with my mother.”
Relationships: Arya Stark & Lady Stoneheart, Arya Stark/Gendry Waters
Comments: 13
Kudos: 71





	risen again

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Gendrya Week 2020 for day 5: Deja Vu, that theme comes up more in the story structure than in the story content, and I'm late, but you know how it is. 
> 
> This is book canon compliant-ish with book canon ages and I think it spans ~four years, so there's nothing explicitly romantic, the rating is for darker themes. Hope you enjoy!

_The dead can be brought back._

_Arya’s heart feels weightless with the thought as she looks upon the woman on the riverbank, her skin grey and marred with cruel and vicious knife strokes. Her Lady Mother._

_“Save her! Thoros you have to!”_

_Her voice is shrill, to disguise the sob resting at the base of her tongue._

_“It’s been too long,” Thoros says and Arya cares not for his regretful tone or soft eyes. She hates him. “There’s nothing to be done.”_

_“No!” She yells, fingernails biting into her palms. “She’s my mother! Make her better!”_

_Beric looks at her with his one good eye. He has some compassion in him still, some lordly honor._

_“I’ll give her a kiss, and we’ll send her on her way, in the Tully fashion.”_

_But when he kneels, rearranging Harwin’s cloak around her shoulders with grace, and bends to brush her lips, it is he who slumps to the ground, and her mother who opens her eyes._

_They are filmy, the proud Tully blue clouded with death._

_The men murmur as she rises to her feet, they take a collective step back. Not Arya. She will be brave._

_“Lady Stark,” Thoros croaks from the place where he kneels next to Beric’s body. He is crying silent tears. “You must come with us.”_

_Arya reaches forward, hoping for an embrace, a word of love. Catelyn Stark is confused, head raised as if she doesn’t see her. It is Arya who has to cross the distance between them, taking her mother’s hands in her own. They are colder than ice water._

_At night, they make camp. Arya ignores the others and sits close to her mother. Sometimes she would hiss, the sound like the creek of a floorboard, but most times her mouth opened soundlessly like a fish on a riverbank, struggling for air._

_Her mother doesn’t need to breathe anymore. Doesn’t need to eat or drink or sleep. Mostly her hands scramble over her paper-thin skin like a spider over a web. It frightens Arya, but she sits ups with her late into the night, even when exhaustion makes her vision blurry, because any moment might be the one when she gathers her voice and remembers._

_It takes a string of endless hours, but at dusk, three days since she had risen again, Lady Catelyn finds her voice._

_“Kill them all,” she says._

* * *

Arya is back.

The rest of the Brotherhood is too, and the Lady as well, but it is Arya that Gendry’s focus lands on. There is a weightlessness in his chest as she approaches, at least until he can make out the details of her figure.

She doesn’t look well, thinner than she should be. The hollows of her eyes are as dark and ominous as caves, clouded with the death she’s seen. Neither of them smiles when he catches her gaze, though it’s been many weeks since he’s seen her.

The Brotherhood makes camp outside, for there is not enough room at the inn and the Lady will not cross the threshold besides.

Arya doesn’t linger to help them, staying only long enough to unsaddle her horse before she slips over to him. He chances a smile then, only for it to sit on his face, unreturned.

“You hungry?” He asks. It’s best that they talk with food in their bellies. A pinch in the gut leads only to sour moods and broken attempts at comradery, Gendry has learned.

“No,” Arya lies. Her voice is rough, like she’s been screaming, or crying.

“That’s horseshit,” he says, his mood blackening despite his best intentions. He hates being lied to. “You look like a strong wind’ll blow you over. Come inside and eat something. Jeyne’s a better cook than them lot you’re out on the road with.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” she snaps, but pushes past him in the direction of the kitchen anyways.

Arya gets herself set up with a nice sized portion and sits by the hearth in the dining hall to eat it. She takes only the most meager of bites. Gendry’s brow furrows. The orphans talk about nothing more than what their next meal will be, and eat everything with a ferocious, near competitive, spirit. 

“There a reason you’re starving yourself?” He’s angry. At her, at himself, but mostly at that bitch with a stone heart that she still calls mother. There had been a weightlessness in his chest when he had seen her approaching atop her horse; it is gone now.

He saw the spite flare in Arya’s eyes, the stubborn way she fills her spoon and takes three consecutive bites.

“I’m not _starving_ myself,” she says. “Don’t act as if you know what’s best for me.”

The pinch in Gendry’s stomach disappears, replaced with heaviness, as if weighted down with leaden ore.

“Oh, but the Lady does?”

* * *

_The Lady, the men take to calling her._

_There are whispers of “Stoneheart” among the weak-willed at the fringes of the group, but Arya snaps at anyone who talks about her mother like that. Not that it changes opinions. Arya is the only one who truly understands her._

_Beric had never been ruthless enough to weed out the Lannisters and Freys the way they deserve, but the Lady is. They go on raids once a week. Their new leader speaks little except orders, fills them all with determination and intent. For the first time since Yoren had told her about how he had gotten his revenge, her list seems to mean something tangible._

_Arya gets stronger and swifter and better at killing. The mistakes, the gash on her arm from a Lannister sword, the lingering headache from a strong swellsword fist, only make her determined to train harder._

_Thoros disagrees._

_“You’re just a wee thing, these…battles aren’t any place for you. I think you’d be better off going along with Gendry to stay at the Inn at the Crossroads, you’ll be safer there.”_

_Indignation rises like hot air within her, then drops to her feet when she processes what he’s said._

_“Gendry’s leaving?”_

_He’s been quieter since the raids have started, his mood darker. Like it had been at Harrenhal. Still, he is her dearest friend._

_“Aye, he’s young like you, better use at the forge. You could be a great help too, what with all those orphans staying with the Heddles.”_

_Arya bites her lip, considering. Loyalty pulls her in two directions. She feels a cold breeze at her neck, then creaky fingers resting on her shoulder._

_“Daughter,” the Lady rasps and Arya’s heart trembles. It is the first time her mother displays any remembrance of her. The garbled word is enough to spark a fire in her, one bright enough to keep her warm._

_“No,” Arya says to Thoros, looking over her shoulder. The Lady is ugly, unnatural, but Arya is not afraid of her. “I’m staying with my mother.”_

_She hisses in approval._

* * *

The fire hisses behind them, and Arya’s eyes shift to her lap; she finishes eating. For a moment Gendry thinks something he said might have reached her.

“You don’t understand,” she says, like a half dozen other arguments they’ve had. Though she’s quiet about it this time.

“No, I don’t understand because I never had a family I loved like you did. And because my mother stayed dead in the ground.” It would be a harsh thing to say if the words weren’t her own. Her eyes flash to his because she recognizes them. She can say he doesn’t know her all she wants, but that doesn’t make it true.

“It’s more complicated than that,” Arya whispers and he can hear her regret and it creates his own.

“Yes,” he agrees, wondering over an apology.

“I think I’m going to stay here awhile,” she says, before he can parse his thoughts out. “Even after the Brotherhood leaves.”

“Can you even do that?” He remembers a conversation he overheard years ago. When her family came before him like he always knew it would.

“Yes.” She swallows thickly. “I think I’ll be better off.”

Her head turns away from him, looking to the stairs, where little eavesdroppers peer over at them. They scurry away in a hurry when they see they’ve been found out.

“I’ll be more useful here,” she continues, although he doesn’t quite know what she means. She’s the most steadfast warrior in the Brotherhood, her loyalty as sharp as her Needle. Her absence would be a great blow to the raiding team. “And it’ll be nice to be with you.”

She bites her lip, and his heart tremors.

* * *

_The men shake with tremors when they stand accused. There aren’t raids anymore, there aren’t enough enemies to warrant them. Instead the Brotherhood tracks down lone men and puts them to trial._

_It doesn’t feel so righteous anymore, without the rush of battle blood. Arya’s boots are too small, and her feet drag. She’s growing, taller and thinner, and she’s exhausted all the time._

_But the Lady does not sleep. It takes Thoros numerous anxious speeches of persuasion to convince her that they need to rest, regroup, replenish._

_The Inn at the Crossroads doesn’t change much, yet each visit feels different. The children are quieter, the Heddles are dour, and the fires burn dark and low._

_Gendry at least is glad to see her. He hugs her fiercely and sits close to her at meals and Arya wonders how she went months without seeing him. His eyes express the same exhaustion as hers, but she keeps looking at them anyway. He’s her truest friend still, and though she’s glad to have her mother, she can’t talk to her like she can talk to Gendry. The Lady isn’t apt at offering responses._

_So she tells Gendry everything instead, late at night, in the forge when they should both be sleeping. Tells him about the raids, and the hangings. He nods, slow and understanding. She tells him how she feels like her mother’s daughter, like she never had when she was young. He stops smiling after that._

_Interrupting, he speaks of his smithing, and how he’s improving, even without a master to teach him more. The stories he tells about the orphans are charming, even if Arya can tell that such bright moments are few and far between. They both reminisce about the little girl, Weasel, and hope she found someone nice to take care of her._

_The next day she ignores the Brotherhood and her training in favor of elaborate games of Find the Flag. It isn’t the same sort of fun that she used to have in the Winterfell courtyard. She doesn’t know if she’ll ever be that carefree again, not with the gray thoughts always swirling in her mind, or the black words she speaks into the night every day before bed. They drag her down, like her too long limbs, or the frayed ends of her hair._

_That night she asks Gendry to cut it._

_“Short, like it was when we met,” she says. He’s gentle with the shears, more careful and precise than Yoren could have ever hoped to be. Some days she has hoped for her mother to offer to brush her hair or put it back in a plait like she had when she was little, but that’s not the sort of woman her mother is now. Gendry’s knuckles on the nape of her neck are gentler than she expects, and his fingers in her hair make her softer and more content than she’s been in a long, long time._

_With her head and shoulders and chest lighter, she doesn’t think before telling him about Olyvar Frey, and his trial, and the way he hung. She doesn’t catch the alarmed crinkle of Gendry’s brow until he speaks._

_“But that’s wrong,” he says. “He was a little boy who was loyal to your brother.”_

_The words scare her, like the sudden snap of a dog’s jaw._

_“…He was a Frey,” she says, her hands clutched in her lap. She’s seen Gendry’s anger plenty of times before, but never has it been directed at her._

_“So what, he’s dead because of his name? Isn’t the reason the Lannisters want you dead because of yours? Killing him isn’t justice, it isn’t even revenge.”_

_She hates Gendry’s anger, hates the scorching way it makes her feel, how her tongue is heavy, as if burdened by a hot coal._

_“It’s what mother said to do.”_

_“So? Since when have you ever done as you’re told?”_

_His words dredge up secret thoughts she’d hoped to bury. For the first time since that day on the bank of the Green Fork, she wonders what her father would think of her, rather than her mother. Her cheeks flame. Tears glide into the corners of her lips and she hates that she’s crying, hates that Gendry can see._

_Shamed and hurt, she leaves._

* * *

The Brotherhood leaves the Inn without fanfare. Thoros seems anxious, turning back to look at Arya standing at the threshold. Gendry doesn’t think she’s ever been apart from the Lady for any considerable length of time before.

“Can I come to the forge with you?” She asks, belying an anxiety. In most circumstances she doesn’t ask for permission.

“’Course.” He leads the way. They’re silent during the short walk, he almost forgets their argument from the evening before.

“I wanted to talk to you alone,” Arya admits, when it is just the two of them. “I couldn’t dare mention it in front of any of the others.”

“Mention what?” The fire is fading in the place it is meant to roar, but Gendry can’t find it in himself to care.

“My mother,” she whispers, fiddling with his tools, something he normally hates. It is amazing, the things he will forgive for Arya.

“What about her?” He carries no love for Lady Stoneheart, and hates her for the poison she had poured into Arya’s mind.

“She isn’t, really,” Arya breathes, so quiet that a strong wind would have disguised her words. “She isn’t my mother. But—”

His throat constricts and he steps close to her, so he can hold her hands in his. How odd, that he has wanted her to say so those words for so long, and yet is saddened to hear them.

“She isn’t my mother.” A deep exhale, and the fire has softened to less than embers. “I don’t want to stay here anymore.”

“What about your list?” Gendry questions, even as she’s saying what he’s always wanted for her. “What of the rest of the Freys and the Lannisters?”

Arya shakes her head, sharply, as if to fling dangerous thoughts off her skin. “I don’t want to be her, I want to be me, and…Nymeria.”

“Nymeria?”

“My direwolf, I lost her when I was young, but sometimes I dream as her, and when I do everything feels as it should. I don’t feel angry, or alone. Just where I’m meant to be, with family.”

He doesn’t understand what she means, about direwolves and dreams, but his attention snags on what she says about family. It doesn’t include Lady Stoneheart.

“I feel that way with you too,” she admits, and Gendry doesn’t know what to make of that. Can only focus on the way his heart is leaping in his chest.

* * *

_Her horse leaps under her as the small group of warriors from the Brotherhood make their way to the Inn. Their speed matters not, for the skirmish is long over when they arrive; bodies have been cleared away, and the recent rain hides places where blood may have stained the ground._

_Gendry and Willow notice their approach and come out to greet them. She wants to remain angry at Gendry, they seem to argue more than get along recently, but the sight of him healthy and uninjured inspires only relief._

_“What happened?” Lem demands. Gendry tells the story in blunt points, how they were attacked by the Brave Companions, how a guest had rushed to defend them._

_“She’s recovering upstairs,” he finishes. Jeyne dismounts to go upstairs and see to the injured woman with Lem at her heels, but Arya lingers outside with Gendry._

_“You’re alright?”_

_“’M fine,” he replies, gesturing to himself as if that’s answer enough. “What about you?”_

_Arya sighs. Her appetite has been near non-existent as of late, and headaches take her at odd moments, pain laced through the crown of her head._

_“I’m fine too,” she says instead, unsure of how to tell him with the gap of understanding that still exists between them. How odd that she wants to, despite it, and that Gendry seems eager to listen._

_Her mind struggles to come up with an appropriate way to ask if they are still friends. Lem storms back downstairs before she can find herself._

_“That wench is a Lannister spy!” He spits. “The boy and the old man too. We need to take them to stand trial before the Lady.”_

_Gendry had bowed his head at Lem’s initial accusation, but he rises it to look at her now. His big blue eyes pierce her clean through._

_“…I’ll go meet her myself,” Arya says._

_Brienne of Tarth’s injury is grievous, her sword is dressed with a lion pommel, and her pale blue eyes brighten when she names herself Arya Stark._

_“Mother’s blessing,” she breathes. “On my honor I’ve been charged to keep you safe. I swore a vow to your Lady mother. The sword is named Oathkeeper.” At that, her eyes shift to look at Lem in the doorway. “Believe me.”_

_Arya doesn’t know what the truth looks like, in this stranger’s half torn face, or any other. She feels stupid and young and pressed, with all the eyes in the room heavy on her._

_“You’re too ill to travel yet,” she says, and darts from the room. When Gendry finds her later, and sits by her side, he rubs her shoulder, but doesn’t tell her what to do._

* * *

“What are we going to do?” Gendry asks late that night, as they sit up and share his quilt, legs tucked close to their bodies. “Run away?”

They have nowhere to go. Winterfell isn’t held in her family’s name anymore. Arya’s eyes are shut, thinking. When she peels them open, there are no answers in her gaze.

“Maybe if we traveled with that Lady Brienne, I wonder if she ever found Sansa,” she says, wistful.

“If you could convince the Brotherhood to follow you, like you convinced them to let her go, maybe we could take back Winterfell.”

“They’d never follow a little girl,” she whispers against her knee.

“I’d follow you.”

She smiles for him, tired but bright, and it’s not enough, but for a moment it’s enough for him.

“We could leave, with Nymeria. Go to the Wall instead, to see your brother.”

Arya looks at him like she hardly believes he’s suggesting it. He hasn’t seen her hopeful in so long.

“What about the orphans?”

Guilt bites at him.

“I— they…” He clenches his teeth and makes a choice. “They’re good enough with crossbows now and the Brotherhood will probably send someone else to mind them. I’m going with you.”

She scrambles forward so that her arms can lock around his neck, her cheek pressed to his, the quilt a tangle all around them.

* * *

_Her stomach is in tangles, worse than any illness. Arya wonders if guilt can make you sick, like how stress turns hair grey._

_The men call her mother ‘Hangwoman’ now, and she doesn’t try to stop them. Sometimes Arya feels like one of those corpses, swaying without direction, sightless. She’d felt noble when she’d stood up and demanded her mother let Brienne and squire Podrick and Hyle Hunt go, but it was the men she had convinced, not her mother. That was nine months passed; her voice has carried no weight since._

_Fire warms her face and hands, but not her heart, not anything inside her. The men mumble prayers to the Red God around her, but her lips stay shut, eyes tracking her mother’s shadow in the twilight. Her shroud doesn’t so much as move with the wind. She wonders if this is what Thoros sees in his flames, or if he regrets it all. His hair is grey._

_Exhaustion pulls at her bones, but not her mind, and she decides to sit up with her mother, like she did those first three nights so long ago._

_“Daughter,” the Lady croaks after long minutes of silence. The word is empty and hollow, the disposed rind of a fruit._

_“Why don’t you ever call me Arya?” She demands, all the more heartbroken because she knows she won’t get an answer. Those clouded eyes do not meet hers. Cannot._

_Her mother is dead, and she is alone._

_That night she runs with a full, untangled belly. The beat of her paws on the ground is steady and the strain in her legs is sweet. Her pack is nearby and she feels safe. Just before dawn she catches the scent of little humans, and horses, and sharp metal in the air and that brings her comfort too._

_She’ll go to the Inn to see Gendry she decides when she wakes. Maybe Nymeria will be waiting for her there. The only members of her pack that she has near._

* * *

Near five years since they started out for the Wall, he and Arya find themselves on the road again. Despite the hunger, and the cold, and the wars around them, it feels right to have Arya walking beside him.

The dead can’t be brought back. Better to hold the living closest to the heart.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Feel free to tell me what you thought!


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